auMina 2.4 Drives Business Outcomes by Addressing Core Business Issues
Uniphore Software Systems, a Chennai-based speech recognition solutions company, today announced the availability of the next version of their popular speech analytics solution, auMina. auMina version 2.4 introduces first-of-its-kind innovation of business packs, specifically designed to drive a set of business outcomes by providing predictive and prescriptive insights from data. The latest version enables quicker value realization through faster and standardized deployments by leveraging intelligence gained from multiple deployments. This release introduces 2 new business packs: the voice of customer analytics pack and a banking industry pack.
The voice of customer analytics pack will drive richer customer engagement by predicting a customer’s intent of call.
The banking industry pack will address business outcomes of reducing the risk of non-collection, increase cross-sell and upsell effectiveness, enhance customer experience and increase contact center efficiency through workforce optimization.
Business packs include pre-built industry aligned KPIs and metrics that will help enterprises realize their business outcomes faster without a lengthy discovery phase.
Speaking of the launch, Umesh Sachdev, Co-founder and CEO said, “We are excited to roll out this new version of our speech analytics software, auMina. This version will not only drive enhanced customer experience but will also offer a range of solutions that will help enterprises realize their business objectives at a much faster rate. With ever-growing consumer needs, it is crucial for enterprises to deploy solutions that rapidly address key business issues. auMina 2.4 is specifically designed to drive key business outcomes for our banking industry clients.”
Additional features of this new release include an enhanced ability to perform root cause analysis on data and a refined emotion detection capability.
About Uniphore:
Uniphore Software Systems is headquartered in IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai. Uniphore was incubated in IIT Chennai, India in 2008 and currently has offices in India, Philippines, and U.A.E with about 100 employees spread across all locations. Uniphore’s investors include Kris Gopalakrishnan, IDG Ventures India, India Angel Network, Your nest Fund, Stata Ventures. Uniphore has worked with over 70 enterprise customers and served over 4 million end users. Uniphore was recognized by Deloitte as a Technology Fast 500 company in Asia Pacific in 2014 and was also ranked as the 10th fastest growing technology company in India by Deloitte Fast 50 in 2015. Uniphore’s Co-Founder and CEO, Umesh Sachdev was recognized by the TIME Magazine list of 2016 amongst ’10 Millennials Changing The World’, and with India’s edition of MIT Technology Review’s ‘Innovators Under 35’ for the year 2016.

former software engineer from India, who claimed he was paid less than Americans, working for the Indian technology services company Accenture, has settled a class-action suit before it went to trial, with the company agreeing to pay up to $500,000.
Details were yet to come in of the case which Accenture settled out of court, according to documents filed in New York state court. However, the case has wider ramifications pertaining to the 85,000 H-1B visas given out every year, including 20,000 for students who graduate from US universities.
The Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has given ample hints in his campaign speeches that he wants to shut down the H-1B visa program for foreign workers, or at least to modify it so that it does not allow American workers to be replaced by cheaper foreign labor.
By settling the case with the software engineer from India, Accenture seems to have given some basis to Trump’s allegations. A class action suit if it had gone forward would likely have brought up more such cases to light.
Accenture has been in the legal spotlight over the past few years.
Last year, H. B. Fuller Co. won a $12.8 million arbitration case against Accenture, after a fallout over contract obligations in implementation of new enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. An arbitrator in Minneapolis also ruled that H.B. Fuller did not owe another $1.4 million in fees, bringing total damages to more than $14 million.
In 2001, Accenture paid the United States government $63.675 million to resolve a lawsuit regarding fraud, illegal commissions (kickbacks), and rigged bids.
The lawsuit by the Justice Department alleged that Accenture submitted or caused to be submitted false claims for payment under numerous contracts with agencies of the United States for information technology services.

Bhubaneswar: Software engineer Rakesh Pattnaik, who went missing in Mahendra Taneya river at Paralakhemundi while taking a selfie on Wednesday, was found dead a day later. The rescue teams of police and fire brigade fished out his body from the water in the morning.
This is perhaps the first official selfie death in the state. On September 26, engineering student Subhendu Nayak was seriously injured after he came in contact with an overhead live wire near Mancheswar railway station while posing for a selfie atop a goods train.
Babuli Nayak, inspector-in-charge of Paralakhemundi police station, said: “Pattnaik and his friend was taking selfies after climbing onto the branch of a tree which was jutting over the river. Accidentally he slipped and fell into the river. We tried a lot to trace him, but to no avail.”
The mishap took place close to B N Palace, a popular tourist hangout in town. Police said Pattnaik, who was working in a top IT company in Bangalore and had come to his native in Gajapati district for Dussehra, had first taken some selfies with his friend in the palace before trying a different shot and thereby plunging to his death.

A 36-year-old inmate at Bhondsi jail — serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife in 2007 — proved to be an asset for employees at the facility after he managed to tweak a software, sanctioned by the government for use at the prison, so that it gave them all the information they needed “in a single click”.
Rohit Pagare, who is a Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) alumni and a chartered accountant by qualification, has been lodged at the prison for the last “eight or nine years”.
Harinder Singh, Superintendent of the Prison, describes him as an “outstanding” inmate and says Pagare tweaked the software at the recommendation of staff at the facility. The software, which was earlier only used to mark attendance, now also provides information about an employee’s career history, such as his earlier postings, awards appreciating his work, charge sheets against him, as well as the terms of his current posting, including the number of leaves he has taken and his attendance.
“He has modified the software so that it is like an electronic service book for us, where we can get all the information we need in a single click. It has reduced our workload, and also helped to fix accountability,” said Singh.
According to Singh, the original version of the software, made by the National Information Centre (NIC), is currently in use in all departments in the state for marking biometric attendance. “We had also started the same at our facility, but there were some issues with it. A normal office works in a 9 to 5 shift, but in our case, there are no such fixed hours,” said Singh.
In 2013, Pagare had assisted another inmate, Amit Mishra, a software engineer who was later acquitted, in making a prison management software called Phoenix. This was later among the four approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs for use in the prison department.
“Since Pagare already had some experience with that kind of work, we suggested he modify this software as per our requirements,” said Singh.
Pagare started working on the software in December and by February, it had been implemented on a trial basis at Bhondsi jail. Authorities intend to extend its use and implement it within the prison department across the state within the next six months, said Singh.Minor kills schoolmate

PM Modi on Pakistan:
Today I am speaking to the people Pakistan directly.
From the leaders who read speeches written by terrorists, the world can expect nothing. But I want to speak to the people of Pakistan directly.
I want to remind Pakistan, before 1947, your ancestors used to consider undivided India their land, worshiped it. And in their memory, I want to tell you something.
The people of Pakistan please ask your leaders, you have PoK. You cannot manage it.
Bangladesh used to be yours, you couldn’t manage it. You cannot manage Gilgit, Baltistan, Pakhtun, Balochistan, Sindh…and you are talking about Kashmir.
People of Pakistan must ask their leaders to first give secure lives to their citizens.
People of Pakistan ask your leaders, Both our countries got freedom together. Why do India export software and your country export terrorists?
I want to tell the people of Pakistan to confuse you, your leaders have worked for ages. I am ready to face that challenge.
I want to tell the people, If you have what it takes, lets compete to end poverty in our countries.
Lets see who gets there first. People of Pakistan and India will like this competition.
The youth of Pakistan, come lets fight. Lets see who ends unemployment first – India or Pakistan.
Lets fight against illiteracy. Newborns, pregnant mothers die in both India and Pakistan. Lets see who can save them first.
And leaders of Pakistan hear this. The sacrifice of 18 of our soldiers will not go in vain.
India has succeeded in isolating you in the world. We will ramp it up and force you live alone in the world.
That day is not far when people of Pakistan will get in the fray to fight against their leaders and terrorists.
My dear countrymen, the future of our nation is connected to peace and good thoughts.
Our country wins when we stand together, say in one voice, have one resolution.
Today 1.25 billion Indians are ready to pay any price for our pride and peace. That’s why I see a glorious future for India.
My dear countrymen, on Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s birth anniversary we have decided to re-dedicate ourselves to work for the poor.
In the 21st century, our goal should be that India should be free from poverty, full of prosperity.
India should aim to be- Free from injustice, land of justice, Free from filth, land of cleanliness, free from corruption, land of transparency, free from unemployment, land of employment.
India should be- Free from crimes against women, land of dignity for women, free from disappointment, land of hope.
On Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s birth anniversary let these are our guiding goals.
PM Modi on terrorism:
We’ve been hearing it for a while – the 21st century is Asia’s century. And Asia has all it takes to achieve that.
But there is one country in Asia that is working towards thwarting that vision.
It is doing all it can to ensure Asia is bloodied, it is bruised by violence, falls prey to terror.
Wherever terrorism is happening in Asia, the blame is on one country.
Not just India, every country in Asia believes this. One country is exporting terror everywhere.
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, all neighboring countries and in the world, wherever a terror attack takes place.
It emerges either the terrorist set out from here or after the attack, like Osama Bin Laden, took refuge here.
Brothers and sisters, people of Kerala know what terrorism looks like.
Kerala’s daughters, nurses, were taken away by terrorists. Entire India was tensed.
But entire Kerala saw, how the government in Delhi returned the daughters of Kerala to their homes.
Terrorism is an enemy of humanity. Humanitarians all over the world have to unite and condemn terror.
India never has and never will bow down to terror, it will defeat terror.
The entire country is seeing the effects of terror.
In Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri, 18 soldiers had to sacrifice their lives.
Let terrorists hear this, India will never forget this Page Design Web.
In the last few months, 17 times terrorists in groups of 4 or 6 have tried crossing the border to spread destruction.
But our brave soldiers thwarted those efforts, they slew them on the LoC.
In the last few months, our soldiers have killed 110 terrorists – the highest in recent years.
Saving the countries from these 17 possible attacks was done by our soldiers, they stood guard and secured our citizens, we are proud of their service, their sacrifice.
You can imagine, the neighboring country succeeded in one attack and 17 soldiers had to fall prey.
If they had succeeded in all 17 incidents what would have happened?
Our soldiers, our police, all our security forces have won these battles not just because of the weapons. Weapons are toys.
Soldiers win on confidence, and India’s confidence is flying at its highest. This is our strength.
Leaders of the neighboring country said will fight 1,000 years, where did they disappear, we cant see them anymore.
And today’s leaders, they read speeches written by terrorists and singing about Kashmir.

PM Modi on BJP Ideology:
In the last century, India’s political life was influenced by three people, Mahatma Gandhi, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Ram Manohar Lohia.
When elected members of the NDA chose me as their leader and when I gave the first speech on the floor of the Parliament, I had said this government is dedicated to the poor.
This comes from the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. Our directive is based on their ideology.
And I want to assure BJP workers of Kerala, the service you have given, the injustices you have endured, the sacrifices you have made will not go in vain.
They will bear fruit and the BJP will herald progress in Kerala.
Kerala has all the capability to become India’s top state.
The BJP and the Indian government will be ready to all it takes to make this happen.
India is moving forward with one mantra- Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.
The whole world recognizes India to be the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

Singapore: Seventeen years ago an Indian man from New Delhi mesmerized the technology departments of global corporations with a doomsday story many times more puffed up than the luxuriant crop of hair he sported.

The latter was a wig, and the former was just bad science fiction packaged by consultants as a $600 billion hair-raiser. But Dewang Mehta, the chief lobbyist for India’s fledgling software services industry, carried off both with aplomb, convincing businesses that at the stroke of midnight of the new millennium, their computer systems would crash because old programs measured years in two digits instead of four. The solution, he persuaded them, was to let a horde of techies from Bangalore and Hyderabad go through each line of code and fix the Y2K bug.

That was the birth of India’s massively successful software services industry, which died on Friday after a short battle with newer digital technologies. At the time of its demise, the business was worth $110 billion in annual export revenue.

The first hint that the end near came on Thursday when Tata Consultancy Services, the biggest Indian software vendor by market value, announced a virtual stalling of its business in the September quarter from the previous three months. After Infosys followed up by slashing its full-year revenue guidance for the second time in three months, it was time to turn off the ventilator.

Infosys revenue growth pre-Lehman

A coroner’s inquiry unearthed three signs of decay, the first of which shows how Indian companies’ cheap-talent-fueled growth ran out of breath. In the four quarters before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Infosys saw revenue increase an average 29% in constant-currency terms. Back then, Dublin-based Accenture’s growth was just half as high. But there’s nothing exceptional about Indian companies’ expansion anymore. All that investors have heard from management’s this year is the gloomy commentary on how challenging it’s become to get clients to open their wallets. When the companies do make news nowadays, it’s more often for dodgy business practices, regulatory slaps on the wrist, and senior-level exits.

A slowdown alone wouldn’t have stopped the Indian industry if it had been able to embrace “smack,” or social, mobile, analytics and cloud-based technologies. But the vendors wasted so much time defending their legacy business of writing code for and maintaining purpose-built enterprise applications that they failed to make a mark in the new digital world Page Design Hub.

As an analysis from Mint shows, the dominant trio of Tata Consultancy, Infosys and Wipro between them had 1.5 times more workers doing digital stuff last year than Accenture. But the revenue they garnered was 40% less than what the latter chalked up from newer technologies. That makes the typical digital-tech employee of an Indian vendor 25% as efficient as his counterpart at the global consultant. This gap sets the clock back on Indian companies, which have taken years to narrow the productivity differential:

Maybe it’s just banking clients and their inability to pay like they once did. Or perhaps it’s a combination of weak global growth, Brexit, protectionism and Donald Trump’s vacillating stance on US visas for Indian technology workers. Hoping that turbulence is temporary, investors are still paying a hefty premium for future growth. They may get lucky for a while. Still, a dead-cat bounce from delayed orders coming through would hardly count as proof of life.

The millennium scare got Indian software a foot in the door at global corporations. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Robotics and artificial intelligence are putting the vendors’ labour-intensive business at risk of obsolescence. Even if the concern is as puffed up as Y2K, with plenty of growth candidates in the Indian start-up world, at least for some investors it may be time to back new horses rather than flog dead ones. Bloomberg

In March this year, Red Hat became the world’s first open source software (OSS) solutions company to cross $2 billion in revenue. The term open source implies ‘free’ access to software which developers can modify. Not many thought Red Hat would be successful when the company was founded in 1993. However, it has proved its naysayers wrong with a $14.78 billion market cap (as on September 30), $600 million revenue in Q2 FY17 and entry into the Forbes list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2016 for the fourth time. Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s president and CEO, and Rajesh Rege, its India MD, tell Forbes India why enterprises are now opting for open source software. Edited excerpts:

Q. How do enterprises use open source software?
Whitehurst: Open source refers to the fact that the source code is open and one can modify it. In terms of enterprise use, there are typically OSS alternatives at almost every layer of the software stack. It would be impossible to get through a day without using a fair amount of open source. For instance, if you go on the web, the things you are touching [by browsing, streaming or chatting] are open source; if you get money out of a cash machine, you are going to hit banking systems built on open source; airlines’ reservation systems are almost entirely built on Linux (an open source operating system).

Q. What are the benefits of using OSS?
Whitehurst: It is dramatically lower cost because you are not paying the license fee for the software upfront; you are paying a subscription, service and maintenance fee. Plus today, most new innovations happening in technology are happening in open source—from big data to DevOps (a combination of development and operations). Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn do their entire infrastructure work using open source. If you want to build a private cloud, you could use the same technology that Google uses to do that. The alternative is to wait until a proprietary software (whose source code is known only to the person who created it, thereby not allowing any modification) vendor builds something that looks similar and then buys that.

Q. How are companies in India using OSS?
Rege: The Bombay Stock Exchange is built end-to-end on open source on Red Hat. The Indian Railways uses it for managing the IRCTC portal which they re-architected using Red Hat components. We also serve customers in banks, e-commerce and other sectors like oil and gas and telco. Even the UIDAI—Aadhaar project—is built end-to-end on Red Hat Page Design Shop.

Q. How important is India as a market for Red Hat?
Whitehurst: In terms of employees, it is our second-largest market after the US. It’s a great market for us not only because of its size but also because it is dynamic. There are a lot of massive projects happening here and we get a large share of the new projects. As a company, we are growing at 20 percent; we are growing more than twice the figure here. Also, there are more developers here than anywhere else in the world.